Tuesday, September 24, 2013

And Now We Have The Brushstrokes: Delft University of Technology Reproduces Rembrandt and Van Gogh Paintings With 3D Printers

When Van Gogh's Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers  kicked off the modern era of painting prices in 1987 a man I know began commissioning copies of the Impressionists and Van Gogh (he didn't care for Picasso) as they sold at auction.

The painters he hired were pretty good and the copies were impressive in the obvious skill used to create them but even the untrained eye (mine) could tell they were copies. He said the artists always told him the geometric shapes and underlying drawings were challenging but the brushstrokes were impossible to duplicate.

Here's the list, you can toggle by date, original price, inflation adjusted, etc.

He would have killed for this technology.

From 3Ders.org:
Sep.25, 2013
Scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have created some lifelike reproduction of paintings by Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh in full color using 3D printing for research. They present their work at the conference Technart Monday in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
© epa. Het Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
These work [sic, click through for detail] are the Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, a self-portrait of Rembrandt and Flowers in blue vase by Vincent van Gogh.
The goal is not to produce a precise replica of the original but mainly to check out the process of creating the paintings at that time...MORE